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Need help planning history
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I have used SCM modules 1-4 until this next year. I am planning on using TruthQuest Early American 1 for my 3rd and 5th grader. How many books per section do I plan? I feel like I am spending tons of time trying to find the best books and what might be at my library. I don’t want to plan too little or too much. Any pointers/advice? Thanks
Truthquest has a yahoo group where you could get some answers. I am relatively new to homeschooling, but used Truthquest last year. Look at how many chapters there are in the guide as well as glance them over to see what you really want to cover and what you really wouldn’t mind leaving out. It just so happened that the guide we used last year (AHYS 3) was 36 chapters, which worked out perfectly as one per week. In the end, I didn’t spend exactly one week per chapter, but was able to shorten some and lengthen others. What I did was put the guide in front of me at the computer and then start searching (AND HOLDING — this is HUGE) books at the library and inter-library loan. I found nearly all of them that way. I would do this about 2 wks ahead of when I planned to use them because it can take a while for the holds to come in. I would divvy up the books according to age level. My kids read a ton of books last year and history was their favorite subject. I would read the commentary outloud to all of them, and then they’d read their indiividual living books. HTH.
We are doing the exact thing you are, pangit–after 4 years of SCM modules, we’re trying TQ Early American for dd9 and ds10. I am SO excited about it! Like you, I was overwhelmed at first by the lists of books and felt like I would choose the wrong ones or that we’d miss out on the best. I’ve been working since March to pare our book list down, and with the help of missceegee and RobinP, I feel very confident that I’ve chosen the best of the best. And I still have over 100 books planned for next year! ha!
First, I HIGHLY recommend that you buy and read the books from Charles Coffin, The Story of Liberty and Sweet Land of Liberty. I have read all of the former and have started the latter. They are WONDERFUL. I was skeptical at first about buying books for my own personal study, but decided to take the plunge because I needed a refresher of this time period. I got SO much more! I wish there were books like these for every time period, because I’m more excited now about teaching my children history than I’ve ever been before. They read like well-written novels, not history books. I plan to have both of my children read these books in the future as part of their high school history studies.
Second, I have decided to use 2 spines that are recommended in the TQ guide, Child’s History of the World and This Country of Ours. I don’t know that I’ll use them every time they’re called for, but at least I know they’re there should I need them. I am not choosing books for my children to read from every section, so these spines will hopefully prove useful for those sections for which I have not purchased books.
Third, I am using term book baskets. Each term I will fill a basket with picture books and story books that go along with their independent reading. Reading these books will be totally optional, and I won’t require any sort of narration. But if I leave books out for my children, they WILL pick them up and read them, usually multiple times. I am hoping that these baskets will add to our studies in a gentle and fun way and that the children will spend some of their afternoon free time reading these and adding to their knowledge. If I catch them reading from the basket of books, I’ll try to start a discussion or ask some questions.
Fourth, I am very excited to be using picture books, even though my children are older. After talking w/ Robin and Christie about it, I felt like my children would be missing out the most on these books, even though they can be read and narrated in one sitting. Some examples are Pocahontas and Christopher Columbus by the D’Aulaires, a few of Jean Fritz’s books, and books like The Pilgrims of Plimoth, Our Colonial Year, and Pirates!. So don’t let my “over 100 books” statement make you think that those are 100 chapter books, because they aren’t!
Fifth, the Ronald Syme books were highly recommended to me, and I have scheduled several of those for my son. He is already a voracious reader, but these books are supposed to be appealing for young boys. There are many Syme books in the TQ guide, and although out of print, I found them easily on http://www.abebooks.com.
Sixth, I am daily reminding myself that we don’t have to follow a strict schedule in order to complete this guide by a certain date. I am fully prepared to go a year and a half with this study if needed. I don’t want to feel rushed, especially with the amount of books that I’ve planned.
Seventh, I am definitely using all of the recommended films and a few of the audio books, like Squanto. My children learn very well with movies, and since there are some great recommendations and we have found them easily, we have some fun family movie nights sprinkled throughout the year that will be good additions to our history studies as well!
Sorry that’s a lot, but I figured that from one SCM module user to another and converting to TQ, you’d probably want more information rather than less. Let me know if you have any specific questions about what I’ve planned, if I haven’t covered it all already!
Blessings,
Lindsey
And one thing I’d like to emphasize as does Michelle Miller. You do not need to cover every…single…topic. Nor do you need to cover the topics you do at the same depth. You can’t. You would spend all your schooling years in a single guide. Give yourself grace to go with the flow and completely skip things (like the entry of each and every colony or each and every Indian tribe or even more important events or people.) It really will be OK. It’s better to know fewer things more intimately rather than being a mile wide and an inch deep. Will you have to miss some great books. Yes. 🙂
There has been great info and advice posted here so far. Last year was our first venture with TQ. I used American History for Young Students I, Exploration to 1800 and it was great!
To begin planning, I went through the guide and checked books that we had on our shelves. I also made a chart that cross referenced TQ books used in other programs such as Sonlight, Simply Charlotte Mason, Veritas Press, Beautiful Feet, etc.
I then looked at the topics and broke this chart into 3 parts based on the Table of Contents (TOC). I chose three to coincide roughly with our three – twelve week terms. The break downs were as follows: TOC parts 1-5 Exploration, TOC parts 6-32 Colonization, and TOC parts 33-end Revolutionary War. These were not perfect divisions because there was some overlap, but generally it worked.
From there, I winged it 😉 I really did not have a set schedule from day to day. At the beginning of each week, I chose books from the chart that were popular among several curriculums like TQ, Sonlight, Beautiful Feet, etc. I figured there must be a reason why these books were recommended repeatedly. I also chose books based on our favorite authors from past reading and as mentioned books located on our shelves. I usually read aloud from 4 different books per day. This lasted about one hour.
I used TQ with 2nd grade niece and our 3rd and 4th graders and we covered a lot of ground. The kids also notebooked using Time Traveler CD’s and History Pockets. However, I spent way too much time, ink, paper, and money, printing pages for them to color, cut, and paste. Their binders are beautiful and they LOVE looking back at them, but I do plan to take a little different approach this year.
In the beginning, deciding how much to read was simply trial and error. I think my 3rd & 4th graders could have handled and liked more, but we had a bit of a different situation last year when my niece joined us. She was pulled from a private school in early October and had been taught very traditionally, never homeschooled. My sister brought her four days per week so I then felt like I had to fit school in a Mon – Thurs box. It was stressful for a variety of reasons.Anyway, this fall, I will be using TQ AHYS II. I recently completed my chart like the one mentioned above. Although, I don’t have the terms divided yet. It’s only 15 pages this year 😉 Like Lindsey, I have a little over 100 books to choose from. My niece will not be joining us this fall and we had one older dd graduate in May so I’m down to 2 school age kiddos and two 2-year olds (one of our own and one we babysit). I’m really looking forward to this time with the two school age children (4th & 5th grade).
The TQ Yahoo Group mentioned is awesome! Michelle Miller, author of TQ is an active member and very helpful…..just like the SCM team here 🙂
I’ve posted several book reviews as well as our book lists from last year on our blog. You can find them here…
http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/search/label/TruthQuest
A few books I know I will read again with our younger son when covering this time period are…
D’Aulaire picture books
The Vikings by Elizabeth Janeway
This Dear Bought Land by Jean Lee Latham
James Cross Giblin picture books
some Jean Fritz books
some Cornerstones of Freedom books
some Childhood of Famous Americans books
Stranded at Plimoth Plantation by Gary Bowen
James Knight’s Adventures in Colonial America series
Pirate Diary: The Journal of Jake Carpenter by Richard Platt
Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates
Struggle for a Continent by the Maestros
picture books by Kate Waters
Wilderness Wife The Story of Rebecca Boone by Etta DeGering
Discoverers and Explorers by William Shaw – I read excerpts from the free sight below….
http://archive.org/stream/discoverersande00shawgoog#page/n6/mode/2up
America’s Paul Revere by Esther Forbes
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
America’s Ethan Allen by Stewart Holbrook
Guns for General Washington by Seymour Reit
Sorry, these books are in random order, not as found in the guide. Oh my, there’s so many more wonderful books, but I will stop there!! We learned so much last year…notice, I said “we”, myself included :))
Since some of you have used both, I’m just curious about pros & cons of each … the modules and TQ. What do you like better about TQ & why. What did you like best about modules? Again, just curious. 🙂
I have the same question as Blessed Mommy…for those who have used both SCM modules as well as TQ: please tell us how the two compare.
I used TQ last year (American History for Young Students 3) for our FIRST year of homeschooling, and we did love it, but I am feeling overhwelmed by having only 5 years left with my oldest, plus three younger kids to consider — for me it’s diffiuclt to figure out which guide to choose for TQ while taking into consideration everyone’s needs (as I prefer for us all to be on the same time period), so I was considering just starting with Module 1 of SCM for simplicity’s sake. Having a good understanding of how Bible correlates with history is important to me, and I have a very shallow understanding of history, myself…so I thought perhaps I’d just go back to the beginning with SCM module #1. I read some comments, however, that some moms looked back after using that and couldn’t remember what they learned and/or their kids weren’t excited about it. That would be sad. History with TQ was our favorite subject last year. I even thought I could look at the accompanying TQ guide and throw in some books to accompany SCM modules. But, I am completely wavering and totally unsure: TQ vs. SCM modules (in addition to which time period). TQ having two levels of American History (3 years each) is what throws me off — if I have a child go through all of the lower level, it doesn’t always leave time to do the other 4 periods of history prior to re-visiting American History in the form of Age of Revolution 1, 2 and 3 (which ALSO includes world history).
I’m probably not the best person to ask for a review of TQ since today was our first “official” day to actually use it. I’m very familiar w/ the guide since I’ve been flipping through it, highlighting, checking off, and more since March, but I can’t speak from the experience of actually having used it.
I can tell you what drew me to TQ, after using (and loving) the SCM guides for four years.
- Many of the spines SCM suggested just weren’t fits for our family, despite multiple attempts at using them. It was hard for me to know what to substitute, since I was not at all familiar w/ the time periods we were studying. Oxford First Ancient History and the Famous Men of … books by Guerber were heavily used throughout three of the modules, and none of us liked them at all. I felt like the flexibility or options to choose something else just weren’t there w/ SCM.
- I wanted more independent reading for my children. Although the suggested books in SCM have been wonderful for us, I didn’t feel like there were enough options. One or two books would be recommended for a particular study and that’s it. I wanted more options since I am an advocate for equipping children to be self-learners.
- I have omitted the geography and Bible portions of the SCM module guides for the last two years. The method I have developed for map study/drill with my children has worked so well that I didn’t need the geography lessons in the SCM modules at all. Then, when I started my kids on doing independent topical Bible studies (using some of Sonlight’s older material), I no longer used the Bible lessons. So, I was basically using 1/3 to 1/2 of a guide book, but still paying the full price for it and having to modify it for our use. With TQ, I can continue our independent geography and Bible and have just a history guide, which is what I needed anyway.
- TQ isn’t heavily dependent upon a spine, which have been touch and go with me for a long time, and I’ve had more disappointment with spines than I have success.
- TQ gives me a very wide range of options when it comes to book choices, spines, audio books, activity books, and films. This is a pro and a con, in my opinion. If looking at a list of hundreds of books is intimidating to you, you might find TQ a little scary. If, however, you have confidence in your ability to choose books for your family and be ok with the chance that it might not be a good fit, TQ might be a great choice.
- At first, I really wanted to somehow combine SCM w/ TQ. Now, I’m totally TQ. There wasn’t one book that I found suggested in SCM that wasn’t also on the TQ lists. That meant, again, more options. So we are reading ALL of the books SCM recommends for this time period (Exploration thru Rev. War) PLUS more that they didn’t list. I feel like TQ is more comprehensive and allows for as shallow or deep of study as one would like.
What I love about the SCM guides:
- The way it’s all planned out for you. It takes almost no prep work to open an SCM module guide and complete a lesson, as long as you have the recommended resources at your fingertips. For someone who doesn’t want to take the time to plan their own thing or guess at the timing of lessons or how many weeks/terms it will take to complete a study, the SCM guides are PERFECT.
- They aren’t fussy. The guides are simple. There is no over-loading the children or mother with too much work. The booklists by term make it so that you have ample time to order books or reserve them at the library. The suggested books that we read (other than the spines) were completely age-appropriate and interesting for my children to be able to give good written and oral narrations.
- History was THE subject I was intimidated by when I started my homeschooling journey. The SCM module guides removed all the intimidation and gave me courage and boldness to teach a subject I was scared of, especially the time periods I had no familiarity with AT ALL. For that alone, using them four years in a row was totally worth it.
That about sums it up for me. We read from a spine today, Child’s History of the World, and my children (and I) loved it. My dd even commented at the end of the lesson that that book was way more interesting than our previous spine (The World of Columbus and Sons–which I will add is also listed in the TQ list). We had one of the longest history lessons we’ve ever had, probably about 45 minutes, plus their independent reading time, and my children kept their focus and full attention the ENTIRE time.
We’re early in the game, but so far, I’m happy with the choice I’ve made. This isn’t to say that I won’t return to SCM at some point because the guides really are awesome, however, I love so many of SCM’s products that I don’t feel badly for going a different direction for history. I absolutely wouldn’t tell anyone not to use the SCM guides, and I think you’re going to have a great year of history no matter which you choose.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I cross-referenced books among 3 reliable places when deciding on which ones to use. If a book was on the list from TQ, SCM, and AO, it was purchased and scheduled. And I relied heavily on Robin’s experience since she has used TQ for years and because her home library is so vast.
LindseyD, I am not the OP, but thank you for your answer to my question. It was helpful.
Do the SCM modules merely tell you which spine to read from? Or is there some teaching within them for history (kind of like TQ has a commentary interwoven)?What a terrific discussion. Thank you to everyone who has contributed on this!
Lindsey, thank you for all the detail on your plan! I am curious about your book term basket: At the end of the term, what will you do with the books from the term basket? Keep them out and accessible somewhere else so your kids can still grab them and dig back into them whenever they want to? Or put them away to encourage them to keep their focus more intently on the books of the new period? Will you have them record everything they read (whether “for school” or “for pleasure”) in their own BOC?
Our BOC, to this point, has been a family one, though it is probably time to get each of my boys their own. It might help ME feel better – i.e. that with all the reading they do, my boys are still keeping history straight in their minds! I’ve been putting off the student’s own BOC as I just couldn’t decide which one to get, make my own…so many options. But that’s another story 🙂
Angelina,
At the end of the term, I will shelve the books from the basket and start over with a new set. I know if I left them out, they would be read again and again, but we are living in a teeny, tiny apartment since moving and no longer have the room for books to be scattered about. The children’s bookshelves are full, and the shelves my hubby built for our living room are also out of room. As for keeping a record of the books, I have resources in the Organizer titled Term 1 Book Basket, Term 2 Book Basket, Term 3 Book Basket. And in the notes section, I will record the titles. I’ll mark the Worked On box every time I see books from the basket being read, and at the end of the term, I’ll mark Finished so that the Organizer automatically moves us on to the next book basket.
My children aren’t keeping their own BOC yet. I’m ashamed to say that we just started a family BOC, but it is going well. I think they’ll need at least a year of watching how we keep our family BOC before they’ll be able to start their own.
Hope that helps!
Do the SCM modules merely tell you which spine to read from? Or is there some teaching within them for history (kind of like TQ has a commentary interwoven)?
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